Dhalgren (21 page)

"Come in, Bobby. This is a young man Edna Brown sent over."

"Gee." Bobby stepped into the living room. Blond as his sister, where her features suggested shyness, his sharper nose, his fuller mouth hinted belligerence. Under his arm was a newspaper. "Are you just living out in the street, huh?"

He nodded.

"You want to use the bathroom or wash or something?"

"Bobby!" from June.

"Maybe," he said.

Mrs Richards laughed. "Isn't it rather difficult for you, and dangerous?"

"You… have to keep your eyes open." That sounded inane enough.

"We'll go upstairs and look around."

"I wanna stay and read the—"

"We'll go together, Bobby. All of us."

"Oh, Bobby," June said, "come
on!"

Bobby stalked through the living room, threw the paper at the coffee table, said,
"Okay,"
and went into the kitchen. "I have to put the bread away first."

"Well,
put
it away," Mrs Richards said. "Then we'll go."

"I could only find half a loaf," Bobby called.

"Did you
ask
for a whole one?" Mrs Richards called. "I'm sure if you asked them politely for a whole loaf, they would have tried to find one for—"

"There wasn't anybody in the store."

"Oh,
Bobby—"

"I
left
the money."

"But you should have waited for somebody to come back. Suppose someone had seen you going out.
They
wouldn't have known you'd—"

"I did wait. Why do you think I was gone so long. Hey, this has got mold in it."

"Oh,
nooo,"
Mrs Richards cried.

"Not a
lot,"
from the kitchen. "Just a little spot on one corner."

"Does it go all the way through?"

"It's on the second slice. And the third—"

"Oh stop tearing in it!" Mrs Richards exclaimed, punched the cushion, stood, and followed her son into the kitchen. "Let me see."

Perhaps it was the discomforting lucidity centered in the recapitulation: he said to June: "Last night, did you ever find—?"

Cellophane rattled from the kitchen.

By the door frame, June's eyes widened in recognition—finally. Her forefinger brushed her lips awkwardly for silence, brushed, and brushed again, till it wiped all meaning from the gesture.

She blinked.

The cellophane rattled.

Bobby came out, sat in front of the coffee table, and pulled the paper onto his lap. When he saw his sister, he cocked his head, frowning, then looked back at the paper, while June's hand worked down the front of her sweater to her lap.

"It's through," announced Mrs Richards. "All the way through. Well, it isn't very large. Beggars can't be choosers." She came into the living room. "We can cut it out, and all have sandwiches with little rings in them. We
are
all beggars till this thing gets straightened out, you know. Are you reading that again?"

Mrs Richards put a fist against her hip.

Bobby did not look up.

"What is it talking about today?" in a gentler tone. The fist dropped.

Bobby read on.

He said, "That whole business last night, with the moons."

"What?"

June offered, "I… I told you, Mother. Last night, when I went out—"

"Oh,
yes.
And I told you, June, I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all. We'd better go upstairs. Bobby?" who only grunted.

"Some people said they saw two moons in the sky." He stood up from his chair. "They named one of them George," and didn't watch June but the back of Bobby's head; and knew June reacted anyway.

"Two moons in the sky?" Mrs Richards asked. "Now who said they saw that?"

"Calkins doesn't say," Bobby mumbled.

"The guy who wrote the article didn't see them," he told Mrs Richards.

"Two moons?" Mrs Richards asked again. "June, when you came in, you didn't say anything about—"

June had left the room.

"June! June, we've got to go upstairs!"

"Do I
have
to come too?" Bobby asked.

"Yes, you
have
to!"

Bobby folded the paper loudly.

"June!" Mrs Richards called again.

He followed mother and boy to the door, where June waited. While Mrs Richards opened first the upper, then the lower, at last the middle lock, June's eyes, perfectly round, swept his, implored, and closed.

"There
we are."

All blinking for different reasons, they entered the hall. He followed till Mrs Richards announced, "Now," and continued, "I want you—what
is
your name?—to walk up in front."

It was surprisingly easy to say, "Kidd," as he stepped around the children.

"Pardon?" Mrs Richards asked.

"Kidd. Like Captain Kidd."

"Like Billy the Kid?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah."

"Neither of them were too terribly nice people," said June.

"The Cisco Kid," Bobby said. Then, with raised eyebrows and small smile, droll as an adult of thirty: "Pow, pow…?"

"Bobby, stop!"

He walked with Mrs Richards. Her heels clunked; his sandal lisped, his bare foot hardly whispered.

As they reached the elevators there was noise above. They looked at the stairwell door with its wire-webbed glass and
EXIT
in red letters across it. Trundling footsteps grew louder—

(His hand pressed against his leg, across one turn of chain.)

—grew louder still, till shadows crossed the glass. The footsteps, dropping below, softened.

Mrs Richards' hand, grey as twigs from fire, hung against the wall by the elevator bell. "Children," she said. "It must be children. They run up and down the stairs, in the hall, banging on the walls, the doors. They don't show themselves, you know. That's because they're afraid." Her voice, he realized, was hoarse with terror. "They're afraid of us. They, don't have to be. We're not going to hurt them. I just wish they wouldn't do that That's all. I just wish they wouldn't."

Two separate elevators opened.

From one a man said, "Oh," a little gruffly. "Honey. It's you. Scared me to death. Where're you going?"

From the other came a faint wind, from a long way up or a long way down.

"Arthur! Oh, Arthur, this is Kidd! Edna Brown sent him to help. We're taking him to see the new apartment"

He shook the large, moist hand.

"Pleased," Arthur Richards said. The closing door
k-chunked
his shoulder, retreated, then tried to close again.

"Edna sent him over to help us with the cleaning and the moving."

"Oh. Edna coming over later?"

"She said she'd try this afternoon, Mr Richards."

K-chunk.

"Good. Hey, let's get in this thing before it knocks me down." Mr Richards guffawed. His white collar made folds in his fleshy neck. His hair was so pale, possible white was lost in the gloom. "Sometimes I think this thing doesn't like me. Come in."

K-chunk.

They ducked before the door swung them into darkness.

"19" hung, orange, on the black.

"Arthur," Mrs Richards said in the humming dark, "they've been running in the hall, again. They came and beat on the door. Twice. Once this morning, and once right after Kidd came. Oh, I was
so
glad he was there!"

"That's all right, honey," Mr Richards reassured. "That's why we're moving."

"Management has just got to do something. You say you
have
been down to the office and told them?"

"I've been down. I told them. They said they're having difficulty right through here. You've got to understand that, sweetheart. We're all having difficulty."

June breathed beside him. She was the closest person to him in the elevator.

"You'd know how upsetting it was if you ever heard it, Arthur. I don't see why you can't take a day off of work. Just so you'd know."

"I'm sure it's upsetting."

The door opened; in the hall he could see two ceiling globes were working.

Mrs Richards looked across her husband's chest. "They wouldn't do it if Arthur was home."

"Where do you work, Mr Richards?" he asked as they got out.

"MSE… Maitland Systems Engineering. Honey, I wish I could take off from work. But things are even more confused there than they are here. This just isn't the time for it. Not now."

Mrs Richards sighed and took out a key. "I know, dear. You're sure Management said it would be all right?"

"I told you, honey, I got the key from them."

"Well, they never answered my letter. They answered in two days when I wrote them last year about the plaster in June's bedroom." The key went in with a sound like gravel. "Anyway—" she looked across Mr Richards' chest again—"this is where we're going to move to."

She strode into the pale blue room through rattling mountains of brown paper. "The lights," she said. "Try the lights."

Mr Richards and June and Bobby waited in the doorway.

He stepped inside, flicked the switch.

The ceiling light flared, went
Pppp!,
and out.

June, behind him, let a small cry.

"That's only the bulb. At least you have some power."

"Oh, we can fix that," Mr Richards said and came inside. "Come on, kids. Get inside now."

June and Bobby squeezed through shoulder to shoulder, but remained sentinel at the jambs.

"What else has to go beside this paper?"

"Well." Mrs Richards righted a cane bottom chair.

"There're the other rooms, furniture and stuff." Brown paper roared about her shins. "All sorts of junk. And the dirt. And then of course, we'll have to move our things."

Blinds, fallen from one fixture, dangled their crushed aluminum slats to the floor. "Just take those all down. It'll be a nice apartment when it's clean."

"Did you know the people who lived here before?"

"No," Mrs Richards said. "No. We didn't know them. Now all you have to do is clean these out." She walked into the kitchen and opened a broom closet. "Mop, pail,
Spic-n'-span.
Everything." She came back. "There's all
sorts
of things in the other rooms."

"What were they doing with all this paper?"

"I dunno," Bobby said uneasily from the doorway.

Stepping into the lichenous leaves, his bare foot came down on wood, wire, glass:
krak!
He jerked his foot, kicking away paper.

The break in the cover-glass went through both faces: framed in black wood, husband and wife, bearded and coiffed, posed in nineteen-hundred clothing. He picked it up from the papers. The loose glass ground.

"What's that?" Mrs Richards asked, stepping around more overturned furniture.

"I guess I broke it," trying to feel, without looking, if he had cut his foot.

Between the parents, in matching sailor suits, a sister and her two brothers (one younger, one older) looked serious and uncomfortable.

"It was just lying on the floor."

Mrs Richards took it from him. The hanging-wire rattled on the cardboard backing. "Isn't that something. Who do you suppose
they
are?"

"The people who lived here before—?" June stepped up, then laughed. "Oh, it couldn't be. It's so
old!"

"Daddy," Bobby said from the doorway.

"Yes?"

"I think Kidd wants to use the bathroom."

June and Mrs Richards both turned.

"I mean," Bobby said, "he's just been living in the park, and stuff; he's real dirty."

Mrs Richards sucked her teeth and June only just did not say, "Oh,
Bobby!"

Mr Richards said, "Well…" smiling, and then, "Um…" and then, "Well… sure."

"I am sort of scroungy," he admitted. "I could use a washup, after I finish work up here."

"Sure," Mr Richards repeated, heartily. "I've got a razor you can use. Mary'll give you a towel. Sure."

"In
this
room—" Mrs Richards had leaned the photograph against the wall and was trying to open a door now—"I don't know
what
they put in this room."

He went to take the knob. Something scraped as he shoved the door in a few inches. A few inches more and he could peer: "Furniture, ma'am. I think the whole room is filled up with furniture."

"Oh, dear…"

"I can squeeze in there and get it out"

"Are you sure—?"

"Why don't you all just go downstairs? I can get started on this. It's got to be neat and clean. It's a mess now. There's not too much you have to show me."

"Well, I suppose…"

"Come on, Mary. Let the boy get to work."

He went back to the front room and began to push the paper over to one side of the room.

"Bobby, come on back from there. I don't want you getting in trouble."

The door closed:… the boy? Well, he was used to having his age misjudged. (Where do they want me to put this crap!) He turned around and, with his sandal, stepped on something else. He kicked back paper: a kitchen fork.

He put his notebook on the chair Mrs Richards had set right, and began to fold the wrapping paper to yard-square packets. Out there on the balcony, he could toss it over. Shit-colored angel flakes? And the furniture: crash! No, can't do that very well. Drag all that junk to the elevator, drop a traveling furnished room to the cellar. Punch around in the basement dark with it? Beating on the wall, thumping on the floor? Not that either. Put it all on one side of the room, sweep and scrub, then all to the other. Burn it in the middle? What
does
she expect?

At any rate, in ten minutes, half the floor was clear. On the black (with white marbling) vinyl, he'd already uncovered a saucer filmed with dried coffee;
Time
with a wrinkled cover he recognized from several years back; some paint-crusted rags—

The knock made him jump.

June called, "It's just me…"

When he opened the door, she stepped in with a bottle of Coke in one hand, in the other a plate with a sandwich. The sandwich had a hole at one side. She thrust them out and said: "Please, don't say anything about last night, at the bar! Please! Please?"

"I didn't say anything to your mother." He took plate and bottle. "I wasn't going to get you in trouble."